The Waltonian

In Moscow, Russia, President Vladimir Putin delivered a televised speech from the Kremlin on Monday night, where he repeated his demand that Ukraine must not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 2002, Ukraine had formally announced its wish to become a member of NATO. NATO promotes democratic values and this undermines Putin’s autocratic regime. In case of war, Russia wants a buffer zone between them and the Western countries.

Over the last thirty years, Moscow has, for the most part, successfully blocked the democratic expansion of NATO from Russia’s borders. However, multiple rounds of expansion by NATO with Post Soviet states would provoke Putin to lash out violently, first by invading Georgia in 2008, then Ukraine in 2014, and now a second, far larger, invasion of Ukraine today.

Dec. 25, 1991 marked the collapse of the Soviet Union. In its final years, it comprised 15 Soviet Socialist Republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

In 1999, Poland, Hungry and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Another expansion came with the accession of seven Central and European countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Although these countries were never part of the Soviet Union, they were regarded as satellite states in the Soviet sphere of interest, referred to as the Eastern Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was a term that was used to describe a group of Communist nations located in Europe and Asia. These countries were under the control of the Soviet Union, China, and their allies.

One can argue that Russia never truly accepted Ukraine’s independence. On Feb. 21, 2022, Putin recognized the independence of two self-proclaimed states in the disputed territories of eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. The conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region started in 2014. The separatists had been accused of being proxies for Russian interests if not simply Russian soldiers in disguise. By the end of 2014, Russia had annexed the Crimean peninsula. The conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region is therefore framed as a war between Russia and Ukraine as opposed to a civil war.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Putin launches an all-out invasion on Ukraine, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War II. Russian missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities. Explosions could be heard before dawn in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared martial law. “The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now!” President Zelenskyy exclaimed.

The U.S. government offered to evacuate Zelenskyy and his family from Kyiv, but this offer was turned down. On Feb. 25, 2022, Syria became the second United Nations (UN) member state to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as sovereign states as Russian forces closed in on Kyiv on Saturday.

Sources: Al Jazeera, AP News, iNews, Journal of Democracy, World Population Review

I imagine many of us have seen Marvel’s latest movie “The Eternals”. In July 1976, Jack Kirby had returned to Marvel Comics to create the “Eternals” comic series, following his Fourth World saga stint at DC Comics. Kirby’s original series ran for 19 issues, including an annual (an extra issue). The “Eternals” is on its fifth iteration. At the heart of the newest series is an artist I very much want to tell you about, his name is Esad Ribic.

In 2004, Ribic’s illustrations for Marvel’s four issue mini series “Loki” garnered him much deserved attention and he became a fan favorite, quickly becoming one of the most highly sought after comic book artists in the industry. Ribic graduated from the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb, Croatia as a graphic designer. In a 2019 interview with Anthony’s Comic Book Art at the NY Comic Con, which you can find on YouTube, Ribic speaks about his initial struggles as an illustrator working in Europe and the United States. Eventually, he found himself working at Marvel after an argument with management at DC Vertigo. What we learn from this interview is that Marvel was in debt and had filed for bankruptcy. Ribic was probably consider- ing another career at this point.

Fast forward 20 years, Marvel has used Ribic to relaunch several important franchises, including the Fantastic Four, Avengers and Conan. Some of his original comic book art is selling for more than $10,000. In 2019, Marvel published a fantastic collection of his work in a book entitled: “The Art of Esad Ribic”. Ribic’s pencil marks are clean and deliberate. His line work is delightful. The way he creates tone, value and contrast is unique, unlike other artists I have studied. However, he is better known for his painterly illustrations of Marvel’s Wolverine, Thor, Loki, Sub-mariner, Silver Surfer and most recently, The Eternals.

Ribic draws everything by hand, which is rare when most comic book artists today choose to combine digital techniques. In a 2008 interview with Body Pixel, Ribic tells us that he uses gouache, tempera and aquarelle for his painting due to acrylics and oils not being ideal for tight deadlines because they are slower techniques. Ribic’s figures are often times strange and frightening to look at; the faces he draws are grotesque— comically distorted or repulsively ugly. They speak to us on a subconscious level.

Check out Marvel’s “Thor: God of Thunder” (2012 – 2014)! It is my favorite of Ribic’s work. He teams up with writer Jason Aaron for the twenty-five issue run. They would work together again in 2019 on “King Thor”, issues #1 – 4. Ribic would paint the first twelve covers to Aaron’s “Conan The Barbarian” (2019 -2021) series at Marvel, ending on issue twenty-five. “Eternals” is Esad’s latest project with writer Kieron Gillen. It is an on-going series and issue #10 will be released on March 9, 2022.

The concept of spring break began in the mid-1930s, when swimming coach, Sam Ingram, from Colgate University from Upstate New York decided to take his team down to Fort Lauderdale for some early training. The idea quickly became popular with other college swim coaches and soon the spring training migration became an annual tradition nationwide. When the word got back to campus, other students realized it was a great way to spend their Easter break. The idea gained momentum though the 1940s and 1950s. College students from northern states would flock to the beaches of southern states. Beaches in Texas and Florida were among the most popular destinations.

In 1958, one story became the defining moment of the spring break tradition, when Glendon Swarthout, an English professor from Michigan State University, decided to accompany his students on spring break to Fort Lauderdale. Based on his experience, Swarthout wrote a book originally titled “Unholy Spring” but smartly changed it to “Where the Boys Are.” After “Where the Boys Are,” the spring break floodgates were officially wide open.

By the mid-1980s, an estimated 350,000 students would mob Fort Lauderdale during spring break. In response to the crazy parties, Fort Lauderdale passed tougher public drinking laws and the mayor even went on the news, “Good Morning America,” to tell spring breakers to take their drunk antics somewhere else. Other Florida beaches picked up the overflow of partiers from Fort Lauderdale, including Panama City Beach and Daytona Beach.

In 1986, Daytona Beach became the shooting location for MTV’s first-ever spring break special. By the mid-1990s, MTV’s annual Skinfest had become a cultural phenomenon, showcasing live musical performances and a bikini-clad Carmen Electra as the show’s spokesperson, welcoming spring breakers to destinations like Cancun, Jamaica, and Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Around the same time, another spring break tradition was born in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1983, several Black students organized a picnic for students who were stuck on campus over spring break. The organizers of the picnic dubbed the event Freaknik as a nod to Rick James’ “Superfreak” and the disco hit “Le Freak”. What began as a small gathering with burgers, hot dogs and boom box music exploded over the next decade and became “the” Spring Break destination for Black college students, high school students, and anyone else looking for a great party. By 1996, hundreds of thousands of young Black people would cruise into Atlanta for Freaknik, clogging traffic day and night for a multi-day street party. Freaknik fizzled out around 1999, as the mayor cracked down hard on cruising.

In 2021, amid the pandemic, colleges around the U.S. scaled back spring break or canceled it entirely to discourage partying that could raise infection rates on campus. Texas A&M University opted for a three day weekend, while The University of Alabama and the University of Wisconsin-Madison did away with spring break. Prices for airfare and accommodations were at an all time low. This will not be the case in 2022. Even though prices have risen, a lot more people are expected to travel.

On Jan. 24, one of several airstrikes hit a telecommunication building in the strategic port city of Hodeida, causing a nationwide internet blackout. Yemen has become an Iranian Proxy War Against Israel, while the UAE faces militant consequences of the Abraham Accords, which aims to promote peace in the Middle East.

Yemen’s civil war began in Jan. 2015. The Houthis takeover captured much of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, by late 2014. Reneging on a UN peace deal, the Houthis consolidated control of Sanaa and continued their southward advance, while Hadi’s government resigned under pressure and later fled to Saudi Arabia. With Hadi in exile, Saudi Forces launched a military campaign — primarily fought from the air — to roll back the Houthis and restore the Hadi administration to Sanaa.

The Houthi movement emerged in the late 1980s as a vehicle for religious

and cultural revivalism among Zaydi Shiites in northern Yemen. The Zaydis are a minority in the Sunni Muslim-majority country but predominant the northern highlands along the Saudi border. The Houthis became politically active after 2003, opposing Saleh for backing the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq, but later allying with him after his resignation as president.

The alliance between the Houthis and Saleh was a tactical one: Saleh’s loyalists opposed Hadi’s UN-backed government, and feeling marginalized in the transition process, planned to regain control of Yemen. Saleh shifted his support in 2017 to the opposing, Saudi-led coalition and was assassinated by Houthi forces.

Iran is the Houthis’ primary international backer and has reportedly provided them with military support, including weapons. The Saudis perceive the Houthis as an Iranian proxy rather than an indigenous movement. For Saudi Arabia, accepting the Houthis’ control of Yemen would mean allowing a hostile neighbor to reside on its southern border, and it would mark a setback in its long-standing contest with Iran. After Saudi Arabia, the UAE has played the most significant military role in the coalition, contributing some ten thousand ground troops, mostly in Yemen’s south.

In Nov. 2019, Hadi and the separatists signed the Riyadh Agreement, which affirms that the factions will share equal power in a postwar Yemeni government. The separatists reneged on the deal for several months in 2020 and formed its own government with equal representation of northerners and southerners. The formation of a Yemeni government signaled some progress in bridging Yemen’s internal divisions; but would be immediately challenged by Iran.

Sources: BBC, CNN, Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy, U.S. Department of State

So you want to be a filmmaker. Come and support Eastern University’s new Filmmaking Club. The aim of the club will be to produce films. At the end of each semester, we will present a show that will be open to the public and only members will be allowed to participate in the critique.

The filmmaking club is based on my experience at The London Film School (LFS) in London, UK. Mike Leigh was Chair of the school at the time and he also taught. Whether you agree with Mike Leigh’s filmmaking process, he was also a byproduct of the film club. Michael Mann also attended LFS. During my stay, the school prided itself as one of the last film schools to still shoot on 35mm film. However, at Eastern we will shoot with the cameras on our phones. We will acquire new equipment as the club grows.

We will work in groups of 3 to 5 people. Everyone will work on each other’s film within the groups. This way more films get made. I will act as the term tutor and hold group meetings where we will work on the script, lighting, and various production issues.

As members advance in the program new term tutors will be asked to mentor the newer terms.

LFS started out as a film club and is now an accredited masters program for filmmaking and screenwriting. There are six terms in the program.

Each term becomes more challenging and demanding. There are two components to the club: watching and making videos. TERM 1 members are required to watch videos designated for TERM 1, but may also watch videos with higher TERMS.

We will start “year one” of the program with an exploration of the French New Wave.

And in TERM 1, we will make 3 to 4 min. B&W, silent videos.

TERM 2, we will produce 3 to 5 min. videos with color and sound. TERM 2 is reserved for the study of directors, and I have selected the films of Ingmar Bergman, which will begin fall 2022. This means that TERM 2 people can watch, for example, Italian Neorealism videos with TERM 1, and TERM 1 can watch Bergman videos with TERM 2.

TERM 3, we produce 15 min. documentaries. TERM 4 and 5, we produce 15 min. fictions. TERM 6 is the “Graduation” film. It can be shot on any medium. Students are encouraged to work independently, but may pull their resources together to work on a film. However, they must play a major role.

LFS has a coffee shop on the first floor of the building where everyone met to hangout and discuss ideas. It was also where people asked each other to help on their films.

I know the perfect meeting spot for us at Eastern. Elections will soon take place.

We will need to form a governing body to run the club and a charter will need to be written. Please reach out to Stefan Martyniak(smartyni@eastern.edu), Coordinator of Student Engagement, for my contact information.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on Jan. 15, 1929 and graduated as the valedictorian of Crozer Theological Seminary of Chester, PA in 1951. King became a pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama from 1954 to 1960. The Church was the backbone of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. On Dec. 1, 1955, with events surrounding the news of Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a Caucasian man, King was chosen to lead the city-wide boycott. On Nov. 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately order the City of Montgomery to integrate its bus system.

Two years later, King and a group of Civil Rights activists formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to conduct non-violent protests for Civil Rights.

Inspired by Gandhi’s activism, King worked with the SCLC to organize African American voters and Civil Rights protests. In 1963, King was arrested at a march in Alabama. During his incarceration, King hand-wrote in the margins of newspapers what would become known as his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In his first book, “Stride Toward Freedom”, King wrote: “The Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhi method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”

King was first introduced to the concept of non-violence when he read Henry David Thoreau’s essay on “Civil Disobedience” as a freshman at Morehouse College of Atlanta, Georgia.

On Aug. 28, 1963, King led more than 20,000 people in a massive demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial, where his speech “I Have a Dream” became a defining moment in Civil Rights history. Through his work, King helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” In the following year, The Voting Rights Act of 1965 created laws that prohibited voter discrimination. General prohibition of discriminatory voting laws prohibit any jurisdiction from implementing a voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure in a manner which results in a denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race, color, or language of minority status.

On April 4, 1968 at 6:01 p.m CST, the day after his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, King was shot while standing on the second-story balcony to his motel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when the bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. He was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m at age 39.

King would be 93 today.

On Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021, schools in New Delhi, India will be physically closed for a week from Monday as severe air pollution blankets the city, the chief minister of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, announced during a press conference after he held an emergency meeting to address the pollution crisis, – leaving the megacity’s officials to consider imposing a complete lockdown.

Government officials will work from home and private businesses are encouraged to do the same to reduce vehicle emissions. Construction activities in the city have also been ordered to stop for four days starting Monday. New Delhi is often ranked as one of the world’s most polluted capitals every year.

Delhi struggles with high levels of pollution especially during the winter months. There are several contributing factors: the burning of farm crop stubbles from neighboring states; vehicle emissions; coal-fired power plants and fireworks used during the Diwali festival. However, this time the situation will be made worse as weather forecasts say winds will not blow for several days. Air quality in and around Delhi was rated very poor to severe early Sunday morning. Prolonged exposure to this level of pollution can cause respiratory illness and even death.

On Nov. 17th, 2021, in response to the latest conditions, the Delhi authorities announced the closure of schools and colleges indefinitely, banned construction activity and told government employees to work from home until Nov. 21st. According to Forbes Magazine , in 2019, 1.67 million people in India died due to toxic air. That figure accounted for nearly one in five deaths in the country and rose from 1.24 million deaths in 2017. Last year, around 57,000 people died prematurely in Delhi as a result of exposure to air pollution according to Greenpeace, despite the Covid lockdown.

The central government, run by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is accusing city officials of inaction, and vice versa. The country’s Supreme Court has stepped in to shut down factories and order farmers to stop burning fields. But the court’s other efforts, which last year included ordering the installation of a pair of air scrubbing filter towers, have been derided as ineffectual.

As stated by The New York Times, India’s air quality suffers from its appetite for fossil fuels, which has only grown after two decades of rapid economic growth. Weaning the country off coal and other dirty fuels will be difficult, a reality underscored by climate negotiations that took place in Glasgow, Scotland, earlier this month. India already struggles to meet its basic power needs. Mr. Modi argues that the use of coal and other fossil fuels is helping build an economy that is lifting millions out of poverty. But emissions from burning coals make the pollution problem worse for city dwellers, particularly the poor, who cannot afford air purifier machines or the electricity to run them.

Sources: BBC, New York Times, CNN, Forbes

What is it that we are celebrating or commemorating when we observe Veterans Day? Veterans Day is the day set aside to thank and honor all who have served, living or deceased, but in particular the living veterans among us.

In contrast, Memorial Day specifically commemorates the men and women who died while serving our country. Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day in the United States, commemorating the signing of the agreement that ended World War 1 at 11a.m., Nov. 11, 1918. President Woodrow Wilson celebrated the first Armistice Day in 1919.

My favorite movie is “The Pianist” (2002) directed by Roman Polanski. It is a story about a Polish-Jewish radio station pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody), who survives the ordeals of World War 2 in Warsaw, Poland. Adrien Brody starved himself to 130 pounds to portray the role of a victim of war in Polanski’s film. In an interview by GQ Magazine, Adrien Brody describes his process and experience. Brody said, “I wanted to show a transition from Szpilman’s lowest point, after being in hiding and not eating, so that- you can’t act emaciated. You have to become emaciated. And that was a technical process that led to a discovery about the hollowness and emptiness, that one feels when you are literally deprived of sufficient nutrition. Then the physical metamorphosis affects your self-esteem, and your energy levels, and your will power, and your strength.” Brody added that “The effects of war include long-term physical and psychological harm to children and adults.”

The official journal of the World Psychological Association, World Psychiatry, published research on the mental health consequences of war. The authors wrote, “As happened in the first half of the 20th century, when war gave a big push to the developing concepts of mental health, the study of the psychological consequences of the wars of the current century could add new understandings and solutions to mental health problems of general populations.”

Veterans Day is a day of reckoning. What is the cost of war? It is a time to remind ourselves that we can do our part to heal society. If you know someone in need or want to help, you do not have to look far. As the only food pantry in Radnor Township, Wayne Church, A United Methodist Community accepts non-expired, non-perishable items as well as monetary donations. They can be reached at: (610)688-5650 or via email at learnmore@wayneumc.org. Sources: https://www.almanac.com/veterans-day, https://youtu.be/WUzeOF_QTWY, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1472271/, wayneumc.org/food-pantry/